If I may play the me's advocate for a moment...

Not sleeping with Octavia for two days had seemed like a tolerable proposition after the initial suggestion of five entire days (oh lord). In practice, though, it was its own form of Hell.

So there had definitely been a bit of fumbling with the keys (and the take-out). And a bit of... rushing through the food part.

"We certainly ordered too much rice," he said, only halfway through his pad thai (sigh). "Who knew such a thing was possible."

[[ for her, and doomed to go nsfw ]]

Last night had been presumably lovely. But there was a bit of a ritual, now, to Sundays, and Lucifer knew Octavia could never simply break a good habit.

(All right, he didn't want to break this one either.)

But there had been a dinner, and good conversation, and candles, and sex, and well--

"I did make sure we had some grapes up here," Lucifer said, stretching. "For a snack."

It was a break.

[[ for her! likely to did not go nsfw, go figure ]]

Certain promises had been made during that shopping trip last week. Promises Lucifer was entirely dedicated to fulfilling as soon as possible.

And so, on Tuesday, some time before he had to leave to go to the Nest, he made his way home. Octavia would be by shortly, but this way he could at least make sure he had all the groceries required to make her a decent dinner after.

Maybe to do some artful (re)arranging of items in his bedroom.

He stuffed the last of the vegetables into the fridge with a pleased huff and shut the fridge door. "Right," he said. "Well. That's... all the prep."

Now to wait for the tell-tale sound of his door opening.

[[ for her, and yeah, this is 100% going to be nsfw. ]]

So Lucifer had actually hoped to avoid his Duke-related issues until they ceased to be relevant, either through enough dinners, or enough sex, or perhaps both. But yesterday's baggage disaster had made that impossible, and while he had managed to postpone some chunk of that conversation until a less ridiculous time--

Well, cats and bags and Dukes and bloodhounds-for-the-fixable or something.

He'd gone out, gotten a nice, large salmon and a host of other groceries, and spent most of the day sublimating through-- well, through cleaning that salmon and cutting some steaks out of it, mostly.

Shut up. He was fine.

It was getting to be evening now, though. At least the salmon-gutting had worked off the worst of the whatever.

[[ for one ]]

Well, it had been a long enough week, but it was finally time for Lucifer's therapy appointment. He opened up the laptop computer he'd purchased for these things about two thousand years ago and settled on the sofa, waiting for Dr. Linda to turn up in the video chat... thing.

And waiting.

And waiting.

Finally, he picked up the phone and called her.

"Lucifer? Is something wrong?"

"You're late for our appointment."

"... Our appointment is on Friday, isn't it?"

He waved a hand. "Yes, Friday, as in today."

"Lucifer, it's Sunday."

He squinted. "No, it isn't," he said. "It's Friday, January 8th. Have you been drinking, Doctor? I know the stresses of parenthood are large and horrific, but pull yourself together, please."

"It's Sunday, November 8th."

A long pause. "...Well, congratulations on surviving election week, I suppose."

( In which Lucifer gets some quicky phone therapy. )

Once she hung up, he poured himself another glass and settled back in front of the television. Some show about people falling off of things into cake? He had no idea.

[[ everything under the cut nfb. open! ]]

Well, that was one terrifying and weird conversation that hadn't ended as poorly as anyone could have assumed. Lucifer held an umbrella out over both of them as he unlocked the door, and then slid quickly into his house.

"There we are. Both unmaimed by candy from the skies," he said, quickly tossing the umbrella into the designated umbrella stand.

He looked up. "I'm going to grab some wine," he said, "I'll meet you upstairs?"

[[ for tavi. ]]

Last night had been quite nice. Samael had almost forgotten about the stupid bloody prank or how he still couldn't bloody well fly out of here - Michael was going to get one massive wedgie when he made it out of here - and he'd happily collapsed into the soft bed he kept finding himself drawn to.

But now he was awake, and sitting up. And for the first time, he noticed the bar. And the piano.

"That other place had those," he muttered to himself, pushing away to go poke at bottles. Try things from bottles. Take a bottle with him to the big piano and start poking merrily at the keys, trying to reproduce some of the things he'd heard yesterday.

Keeping himself entertained while he was stuck here, instead of spitting obscenities was clearly the best revenge he could possibly have on Michael.

[[ for anyone who has a reason to be here! ]]

It was entirely too much on the morning side of noon for Lucifer to be awake, and yet he was utterly and horrifically awake, texting GIFs to Miss Lopez as he scrounged around the room for his clothes.

No, he wasn't a pony. The island remained no match for angelic self-actualization. But he had received concerning messages from Duke that morning, followed by a similarly concerning phone call with a newly unraccooned Octavia, and now everything, he explained to Miss Lopez, appeared to be on fire.

thats rough buddy, she texted back sympathetically. you really care about these people huh

He sat down on the edge of his bed, trousers on but nothing else, and sighed.

yes, he texted back, which is rather unfortunate as they seem insistent on self-immolating at the barest whisper of an opportunity to do so

what are you going to do?

He reached for his whiskey. figure out how to check on them both without indulging my ability to cause chaos everywhere i go

She sent him back a video of a dog hugging a lion cub.

quite right, he replied.

[[ can be open, mostly establishy ]]

Duke was back. And apparently surprised Lucifer wasn't spitting fire at him for running Octavia off? It really had been too long since Lucifer had been down here. Humans.

He swept upstairs as soon as they got to the house, up to the bedroom - which had both the bar and a couch, and honestly, he was a bit too wrung out to really care about implications at the moment.

"I think Octavia's in the clos--" he called.

Nope. Good old beady-eyes was sitting beside the hot tub, outside on the balcony. "Right," he sighed, and walked to the bar to get the bourbon.

[[ for duke ETA: discussion of cannibalism in the comments, and probably more stuff coming up ]]

Lucifer's mansion had stood empty for three weeks now, its expensive interiors darkened. Its former inhabitant hadn't had the time to have everything shipped back to Los Angeles, or perhaps he simply hadn't wanted to, yet.

Chloe Decker stood outside the house and looked up. She'd found a bar with a stuffed talking cat but no alcohol, and she hadn't wanted to be the strange woman buying boxed wine at the supermarket. Trixie was with Maze, and Chloe...

Well, Chloe had Lucifer's phone, and his keys, and so many small little bits of his life. In the end, it only made sense; she slipped in through the door and made her way upstairs. Lucifer would have alcohol in his bedroom, it was Lucifer.

She thought faintly of the last time she'd broken into Lucifer's apartment and drunk his booze, but then she shoveled the memory away, before she started thinking about how he'd woken her up in his bed, and--

She got into the wine, first. Then the scotch. Then the walk-in closet.

And eventually, his bed, wearing nothing but one of his white shirts as she crawled under his too-expensive sheets and curled up into a ball.

[[ for one. ]]